“What will you have — tea or coffee?”
This is the standard question I am asked whenever I visit anyone’s home. Evidently, coffee (when I say coffee, I am referring to all caffeinated beverages) is more than a simple beverage — it is a social phenomenon that connects people.
When I started meditating, like many other aspiring yogis, the idea of giving up my morning cup of Joe was petrifying. I could go without food for a day but skipping caffeine? Not a chance.
Ever since then, I have met people who belong to both groups – those who believe caffeine is the antipode of all that yoga stands for and others who believe yoga practice can peacefully coexist with caffeine.
When I joined Ananda Sangha (a global spiritual movement of truth seekers), as an ex-coffee lover, I was delighted to find many who shared my plight. So, I continued indulging in myriad blends of teas and coffees without feeling guilty.
At some point, I started to question if those innocent cups of coffee were actually causing me more harm than good. I also was not entirely comfortable with being so dependent on an external substance for an energy boost.
A few Google searches revealed a plethora of conflicting arguments for and against caffeine, leaving me more confused than before. Thus, I began a series of personal experiments to answer this question for myself. The results for me were insightful and eye-opening.
The Invisible Addiction
In America alone, 517 million cups of coffee are consumed per day. Whether for meals, a date, or meetings at work, coffee is a part of every occasion – but have you ever thought about what that seemingly harmless cup of coffee is doing to you?
Many coffee drinkers may not be aware of the adverse side effects caffeine has on their systems. There are good reasons why — if people suddenly stopped drinking coffee, it would negatively impact many food and beverage companies overnight. Coffee companies and related businesses have done a good job of keeping the negative side effects of caffeine obscured from people’s awareness.
At the end of the day, what many call the “nectar of the gods” is only a drug. I have given up (quit) caffeine a number of times. Often, after a few months, I return to it thinking that certainly one little cup a day could not do any harm.
I conveniently forget that caffeine is a drug and one can build a tolerance to it the more one consumes. This means today a cup of coffee might be enough to get you going in the morning. Tomorrow you might need two, and a month later you might need a pot just to get out of bed.
I eventually reached a point in my life where I found it difficult to go through the day without a cup. I did not like having to depend on this artificial energy source at all. So, I decided to quit…again!
As you may know, quitting coffee is very hard at first, mostly because of the withdrawal effects. Once those subsided, I found that my life changed rather drastically. Here are a few significant changes in my daily life that I noticed.
A Constant Stream of Energy
You would think I would have less energy after quitting caffeine but it has been actually the reverse. Let’s understand this in more detail.
First of all, caffeine does not give you energy, it merely masks your tiredness and fatigue. Caffeine blocks the adenosine receptors in the brain that makes you feel sleepy. Blocking adenosine ignites the central nervous system and releases fight-or-flight hormones, like adrenaline. it also increases your dopamine levels as a nervous system stimulant, which improves your mood for a while.
Nevertheless, as soon as the effects of caffeine wear off, you experience what coffee drinkers call a “caffeine crash.” At that moment, you may rush to get another cup of coffee to overcome the crash, and … the cycle continues.
When you quit caffeine, you may find that all your tiredness comes to the fore, at least initially. This is the start of the dreaded withdrawal phase. You will almost certainly end up sleeping more (and better) to flush the adenosine out of your brain. Once you are through that phase you may find that you experience a steady flow of energy throughout the day.
Regular coffee drinkers usually have trouble sleeping, or at least do not get the best quality of sleep. As a result, they often wake up tired and reach for another cup of Joe. It is a vicious cycle indeed.
Once you put an end to this cycle, you will wake up feeling much more refreshed. I started to sleep like a baby and also woke up earlier without the aid of an alarm clock after a day or two without caffeine.
Lower Anxiety and Increased Calmness
Many studies have talked about the anxiety-inducing effects of caffeine. In some cases, normal, healthy people suffered from panic attacks just after consuming 500 mg of caffeine (about 5 cups of coffee).
Coffee drinkers often have a background hum of anxiety that never stops — this is called caffeinism. In fact, in 1978, researchers couldn’t differentiate between a person suffering from chronic anxiety and one who was just having too much caffeine.
For me, life runs at 1.5x or 2x speed when I consume caffeine. I find myself frantically running from one task to the other and worrying over the slightest of problems in my day. I found it harder to relax in my meditations and take my mind away from the day’s tasks.
It took me some time to realize that my coffee consumption was one of the main culprits. Since caffeine affects the autonomic nervous system, it leads to side effects like a racing heart, panicky feelings, and increased anxiousness if you are sensitive to the substance.
After getting off coffee, I can focus on things for a much longer period of time while still being relaxed.
Better Elimination
Several studies have shown that coffee can activate contractions in your colon and intestinal muscles. These contractions push the contents down toward the rectum, which is the final section of your digestive tract.
Quitting caffeine leads to better bowel movements and fewer trips to the washroom!
Reduced Stress and Appetite
Caffeine can make you feel full and you might think that a lack of it will make you want to eat more. That is only one side of the story. There is a subtle relationship between caffeine and our appetites.
Caffeine raises cortisol (the “stress hormone”), and cortisol increases appetite. This study found that when faced with a stressful situation, the stress response in coffee drinkers was higher than in others.
Caffeine changes our brains in such a way that even little stresses appear to be huge threats. When you are stressed, you may want to eat more to reduce that stress.
Whenever I have a cup of coffee after lunch, I feel hungry much sooner than if I did not have one. It made me reach out for cookies and other snacks that I know I should not be having.
Now, having quit caffeine, I find myself satiated all through the afternoon until it is time to have dinner.
What about Energy?
If you are a regular coffee drinker, I can understand how your energy levels must be dependent on your caffeine intake. However, we do not have to live like this. There are many ways we can replenish our energy without caffeine:
- EXERCISE – Exercise releases norepinephrine that makes you feel awake and endorphins to improve your mood. Even a simple walk or a few jumping jacks are a great way to energize.
- DRINK MORE WATER – Fatigue, brain fog, and confusion are common signs of dehydration. Drinking more water keeps you feeling refreshed and energized.
- TAKE A POWER NAP – A quick 20-minute nap after lunch gives me enough energy to continue for the rest of the day. Moreover, it does not come with a crash like coffee. Be wary of napping longer than that since it may disrupt your sleep at night.
- MAINTAIN A PROPER DIET – Avoid processed foods, sugar, and excess carbs. Fill your diet with proteins, leafy greens, and fruits to feel lighter and energized throughout the day.
- GET SOME SUN – Spending time in the sun vitalizes your cells, helps your body produce vitamin D, and promotes better sleep at night by regulating your circadian rhythm.
- FULL BREATH EXERCISES – Since most people do not breathe deeply enough, sufficient oxygen does not reach the brain. The result? Fatigue and lethargy. Just a few seconds of simple, deep, belly breathing can leave you feeling rejuvenated.
Paramhansa Yogananda, my spiritual teacher and guru, has given us a wonderful set of exercises to recharge the body with cosmic energy and electrify the cells. He called them the “Energisation Exercises.” Practicing these exercises has been a way to generate much more energy without the accompanying crash that comes from caffeine.
Final Thoughts
If you are still reading, I think you resonate with what I said on some level! My goal was to make you aware of the side effects of something you may consume every day — effects we overlook simply because caffeine is so prevalent.
If you feel “addicted” to caffeine and cannot go without it, maybe it is worthwhile to try quitting or cutting back. You will, at least, strengthen your willpower!
Some are able to drink coffee without being affected by it while others could not be happier about their choice to quit. At the end of the day, it is a personal decision you have to make for yourself. I am certainly no one to put forth an absolute dictum. I can only share what my experience has taught me.
The key is to listen to our own bodies, introspect, and make a decision that helps us live more joyful and mindful lives.
7 Comments
Uhmm well I totally understand that coffee is not a paradise drink and can have negative effect like all drugs but I am Italian so I am used to drink coffee and love so much the taste and the smell in the morning and gives me the energy to start the day. Never mind if it’s only placebo, I love it. I totally understand that if you are from India probably you don’t agree. Maybe you love curry which I don;’t lie at all. I think being too extreme is not a good thing in life as I already try to eat healthy, to remove sugar which is very bad, to remove meat, to drink oak milk, but please let me drink at least my coffee, otherwise life is so boring if we remove everything and then better go and live in a cage like an heremit, not for me. Sorry but I do not agree on this article as I do not like being too extreme like Buddha taught. In moderation coffee is amazing. Namaste’
https://www.ananda.org/ask/tea-coffee-bad-spiritually/
Thanks for sharing your personal experience. In fact, it depends on what plans the soul has in this incarnation. It’s one thing if the soul just wants to be a good person and enjoy life – what is far from easy for most people. And it is a completely different matter if the soul is faced with the task of moving as far as possible in the direction of Self-realization. Master also wrote differently for the first and second of these groups of people.
The following His words belong to the first group of people:
Coffee and tea really belong in the class of habit forming drugs such as the opium alkaloids. The desire to escape from some kind of unpleasant sensation is usually the first reason for taking any of these drugs. They allay the sensation of hunger, relieve the feeling of fatigue, quiet the nervous system when aroused by fear, and for a time mental anguish ceases.
Caffeine-containing beverages are widely used today to relieve the sense of weariness and drowsiness due to the stress of modern life.
The effects of tea and coffee are not degrading as are the other more powerful habit-forming drugs. “To condemn these beverages unconditionally as poisons to be shunned in the interest of health and efficiency is to place one’s self in the faddist class.”
Lesson 127
All people are not affected in the same way by the use of tea or coffee. Some people drink one or both of them for many years without any apparent ill effects. This does not mean that every one should do so.
Caffeine is certainly less harmful to people with stable nervous systems than to persons who are nervously fatigued. The latter individuals do not tend to rest and are easily irritated. Since caffeine stimulates mental activity and interferes with sleep, it tends to aggravate a nervous condition.
Since tea and coffee are drugs with the possibility of doing harm, they should be used, if at all, with discretion and understanding. “Of all ‘temporary resters’ they have the least tendency to degrade their addicts.”
Lesson 128
The stimulating effect of coffee and tea is due to the alkaloid caffeine. The feeling of exhilaration produced by caffeine is very much like that of one of the stages in the action of alcohol. Caffeine quickens the pulse and relieves the sense of fatigue and it produces these effects without ending in depression or collapse.
It has an effect on the heart both directly and through the central nervous system. “The heart beat is first weakened and accelerated, and later it is slowed, but its strength is increased. When one, not accustomed to caffeine, takes coffee, the blood pressure is at first raised, but later is lowered. When one becomes accustomed to the drug, the blood pressure tends to remain high after taking it. There is also an effect on the Kidneys, increasing their secretory activity.”
Tea also contains caffeine but the amount of tea used in brewing is so much less per cup that the effect is not nearly so decided as with coffee.
Lesson 126
And for the second group of people, He wrote somewhat differently:
If bacon and eggs, coffee, cornbeef hash, white sugar, hot dogs, hamburgers, condiments, white flour products, liquor, tobacco, and the rest of the lifeless, devitalized, acid-forming, low-vibrating food imitations still form the coals with which you keep alive the embers of your Blood-Stream, then you are still tenaciously clutching yesterday’s crude tools of ignorance, afraid to exchange the ox-cart for motor-power.
Lesson 24
Avoid the regular use of all mild stimulants like coffee, tea, tobacco, which contain caffeine, thein, and nicotine. Strictly avoid using strong stimulants like liquor. All strong stimulants intoxicate, drug, and deteriorate the intelligence of the brain and memory cells from recording noble ideas and sense-impressions in general. Constantly anesthetized memory cells lose their retentive power, and become inert and lazy. Intoxication obliterates the functions of the conscious mind by harmful chemicals, hence injures the brain, the memory organ. Affected brain produces impaired memory.
Lesson 49
So, you have to detach your ego from the attachment of the senses. “I miss my coffee; I feel badly.” That is what attachment does. The conscious state is marked by restlessness.
Lesson 93
Coffee, tea, and drugs, that either stimulate or suppress heart action, should be shunned as one flees from a plague.
Lesson 22
Thank you.
I’ve given up red meats, 35 years ago, then alcohol mainly I drank beer and wine, one year ago, I think in my next life I will also give up drinking coffee :)
More seriously speaking, I’m ready to give up the automatic addictive unthought drinking of coffee, meaning this that I will keep drinking good quality coffee only when I really enjoy it.
Thanks for your input, I do appreciate your input.
Super fascinating thank you. I am of the nervous disposition and my sleep and nervousness is extremely affected when I have coffee. I thoroughly enjoy it in the moment, I get great energy and function quickly but my sleep later is terrible and that means I don’t get rest to have a productive and happy next day. I happily don’t drink coffee anymore but do allow myself treats now and just deal with effects
This was an excellent, thoughtful article – thank you! I have struggled for many years to quit coffee. I generally have only one single or double shot cappuccino a day, but am very sensitive to caffeine. I think most of us are probably more sensitive to it than we think, or want to believe. Withdrawals are brutal, as anyone who has been able to go without for more than a week will tell you.
For the naysayers, the scientific community consider the widespread use of caffeine a major public health issue. Caffeine is a drug, a psychoactive drug and affecting the Central Nervous System. While if it is addictive is under some debate, it is a fact that it releases dopamine into the prefrontal cortex.
Coffee was never meant to be consumed daily and in the quantities we consume it. I am certain that it will eventually come out as a public health crisis (particularly these energy drinks that are so popular today).
Thank you also for the link to the breath exercises which I will look at now.
Wishing you peace, joy, and good health.